President Donald Trump invited the Dodgers to the White House. Many of their fans feared that the team, by accepting, would humiliate themselves and betray the team’s large Latino, Asian and African-American fan base. Dodgers controlling owner Mark Walter, along with co-owner Magic Johnson, have proposed a solution. Trump has promised that if he can keep the championship trophy, the Commissioner’s Trophy, he will end all seizures and deportations of immigrants.   read more

The Social Security Administration is still trying to reduce its worst-ever backlog of claims, which hit 1 million cases in 2015. The number of pending cases is the largest in SSA’s history. The backlog is the product of several factors: The number of requests for hearings has increased, the federal judges who hear appeals have become less productive, there are fewer attorneys on staff who could decide cases without going through the lengthy hearing process and fewer judges overall.   read more

The Republican plan to shutter the offices, where voters obtain the most commonly used form of identification under new voting laws, has been blasted by Democrats and civil rights advocates. They argue the move was made to help disenfranchise minority voters who tend to vote Democratic in elections. Of the counties with the highest percentage of non-white registered voters, eight had their license offices closed and they were closed in every county where blacks make up 75% of registered voters.   read more

Binge drinking and its associated costs have been increasing. The costs are up 2.7% since 2006. All forms of lost productivity accounted for about $179 billion of alcohol-related costs, while the cost of people showing up (or not) at work hung over cost $90 billion. The government wound up covering about 40% of the $250 billion total. Costs related to motor-vehicle crashes amounted to $13 billion, while the cost of arresting people and court fees related to drinkers was $15 billion.   read more

Inmates’ families will get a break from wildly inflated telephone charges now that the federal government has put new restrictions on the billion-dollar prison telephone business. The FCC has approved a plan that drastically cuts how much companies charge for phone calls by inmates to their families and others. It is capping calls at 11 cents per minute for a 15-minute phone conversation from state and federal prisons, starting next year. Jails would be allowed to charge a bit more.   read more

The controversial power of eminent domain has cost the Sheahan family their property near Area 51 in Nevada, ending their ownership that dates back about 150 years. The federal government has wanted the Groom Mine property, which overlooks the secret air base, offering as much as $5.2 million for it. But the Sheahans refused to accept the buyout, saying the land was “priceless” to them. Groom Mine is surrounded by Area 51’s security buffer zone which is patrolled by troops.   read more

Rep. Duncan said the agency, which has received $9 billion over the past 10 years, is “ineffective” and “irrelevant.” The program has "4,000 bored cops fly around the country first class, committing more crimes than they stop,” he said. They take three or four domestic trips a day, or quick turnarounds on international flights. Many say they are sleep-deprived and must use medication when they’re finally off duty. At least 10 have committed suicide since 2002.   read more

“Not much shakes me in this business – baby murder, sex assault, I’ve done it all,” said David Gaeger, an attorney whose client was taken to Homan Square in 2011 after being arrested for marijuana. “It’s a scary place. There’s nothing about it that resembles a police station. It comes from a Bond movie or something.” The facility keeps no booking information or any other records. “The reality is, no one knows where that person is at Homan Square,” said professor Craig Futterman.   read more

The city agreed to pay Ashley Overbey $63,000 after police used a stun gun on her after she had reported a burglary at her home. But after posting comments about her case on a website, Baltimore officials withheld $31,500 of her settlement. “I was completely devastated,” she said. The restrictions have a “chilling effect” on victims of police misconduct, said lawyer Scott Greenwood. “It kind of defeats the purpose of these types of lawsuits,” said attorney Jeffrey Neslund.   read more

For his efforts, Folta received a $25,000 grant from Monsanto to fund his travel and “outreach.” But once news of the grant became publicized, the University of Florida donated the money to charity. Another expert brought on board by Monsanto was professor Bruce M. Chassy, who received a grant to support “biotechnology outreach and education activities.” Chassy’s activities included efforts to persuade the EPA to abandon a plan to tighten the regulation of certain pesticides.   read more

Last year, 33 departments and independent agencies paid nearly 8,500 workers more than $58.7 million in student loan repayment benefits, according to a report from OPM. That came out to an average of just more than $6,900 per employee. Eighty percent of the money was paid by the Justice, Defense, State and Veterans Affairs departments, along with the SEC. Fifteen percent more workers received this assistance in 2014 than in 2013.   read more

Switching to a high deductible was intended to make people smarter shoppers for their healthcare. “Instead, both healthy and sick patients simply used way less health care,” reported Vox. “This raises a scary possibility: Perhaps higher deductibles don't lead to smarter shoppers but rather, in the long run, sicker patients,” she added. The study also found that it was the sickest of those insured who were least likely to go to the doctor.   read more

Millions of Americans have had their DNA stored at popular genealogy companies Ancestry.com or 23andMe. But doing so comes with the risk that their genetic samples will be turned over to law enforcement conducting investigations, even with no evidence tying them to a crime. Both companies have privacy policies that claim to protect DNA from unauthorized use. But these policies contain exemptions buried within them that state they will deliver DNA samples to police requesting them.   read more

Legal and health experts said they could not think of another modern example of a court ordering offenders to give blood in lieu of payment, or face jail time. “What happened is wrong in about 3,000 ways,” said professor Caplan. “You’re basically sentencing someone to an invasive procedure that doesn’t benefit them and isn’t protecting the public health.” The Southern Poverty Law Center filed an ethics complaint against the judge, saying he had committed “a violation of bodily integrity.”   read more

Rubens and Graves “inappropriately used their positions of authority for personal and financial benefit,” said the VA’s IG. The two senior executives “gamed VA’s moving-expense system for a total of $400,000” using “questionable reimbursements.” The scheming has caught the attention of Congress, which planned to investigate the VA and learn how it allowed Rubens and Graves to pull off what the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs called a “shockingly unethical misuse of funds.”   read more

“It’s exactly what we thought the tax would do,” said professor Barry Popkin. Advocates here have argued that one way to help reduce obesity is to tax sodas, making them more expensive to purchase. The key is to put the tax on the producer, so the price of the drinks is raised, rather than treating it like a sales tax, which is added on to the price. Although it was too soon for the study of Mexico’s tax to draw conclusions about fighting obesity, it did show the effects of the tax on sales.   read more

Laura Pitter of Human Rights Watch, who has investigated torture, said the CIA was being “entirely disingenuous” in claiming it waterboarded only three people. “First, more than three people were waterboarded,” she said. “But second, the CIA used water to torture detainees in a variety of ways that cannot escape classification as torture. ...They induced near suffocation using water. And whether you call it ‘waterboarding’ or ‘water dousing,’ that’s torture – plain and simple.”   read more